Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 14

How We Write: When our soul is tired…

Ever panic, thinking you might never be able to do what you love again?

Me? I love writing. It’s my job,  but also my passion; how I enter the world. And after a season of not feeling well enough to do much of it, I was on a roll in 2012. That is, until the great crash of early 2013.

Hello, my name is Anna. And I haven’t been able to write for over two weeks. Not even a blog post. Me–and I LOVE to blog. Three, sometimes four times a week,  blogging is my morning writing exercise.

It’s how I prime the creative pump. It’s the blood that flows first, engaging my creativity, helping me smile or think or dig a little deeper  until I’m ready to tackle my daily pages. But ever since I turned in the final developmental rewrites for Three Days on Mimosa Lane the first week in February…nada. The well wasn’t just dry–picture a bunch of two-by-fours nailed across the opening, daring me to rip through them and face the big, bad ugly lurking beyond.

But why? Have the two and a half weeks been about being lazy? Giving up? What about the month before that, when I barely had the energy to complete the TDOML developmental edits and didn’t blog in January, either?

You’ve heard of bone tired. I think I’ve stumbled across the state of being I’m going to call Soul Tired.

Overwhelmed. That’s where we sometimes find ourselves, whether its about writing or family or friends or other commitments that we love but realize we can’t face. Not right now. Not with a smile on our faces and a I’m so glad to be here hug.

When you’re soul tired, you’re disconnected. Sometimes, you’re overwhelmed. But always, always, you’re looking at the world around you and realizing you no longer know or feel your place in it. This happens to me after every manuscript is completed, in some form or another. But the crash this time, the emptying of the determination and drive and excitement of my creative life, was deeper and had lasted longer than anything I’ve encountered before.

And yet, I have another book due June 1st (Love on Mimosa Lane, which I already love ;o), and travel planned (to teach, which I also love ;o), and a family who’d like to get to know me again (more Love!) and good friends patiently waiting for me to dig myself out of my funk. Life is good. But how do you feel that, when you’re soul’s running on empty? How do you feel enough to get back to the writing that’s supposed to feed all the rest of who you are?

It’s easy to say you need to recharge. But be careful with that. Trying to force juice back into a drained system can be tricky business.

What I’ve discovered over the years (and had to re-learn this month) is that sometimes a creative system needs to run on empty for a while, with no direction and no rejuvenation and no demands taxing its depleted resources. Sometimes we need to just be, without direction or goals or productive output. Sometimes, lazy is the best medicine of all.

Take this blog post. I’ve tried to write it every day for over two weeks. I’d open the draft each morning (which I’ve lost more than once, btw, through some computer glitch or another) and stare at it, get distracted by a half a dozen things, and it would still be sitting there uncompleted at the end of the work day. Take the emails that have piled up since I dove into heavy developmental edits in January, which I’ve prioritized and have a task list for, but I can’t seem to whittle away at any but the most critical of them. Take the recipes I’m dying to try (not that I’m dairy AND gluten and soy free), but the thought of making a grocery list, shopping for ingredients, and following basic cooking instructions without setting my kitchen on fire takes feeling overwhelmed to a panic that leaves me in a flop sweat just thinking about it.

There’s no recharging when you’re that drained. When you’re soul’s that tired and overstimulated and wired, there’s no medicine for what ails you, except for a few weeks of doing absolutely nothing. Keep in mind that in those two weeks we’ve celebrated my teen’s 17th birthday (sniffle and YAY!), hosted my in-laws in town, dealt with half a dozen other minor watershed moments in my and my husband’s professional lives, as well has helping the teen face through his final round of Governor’s Honors interviews, prepping for SATS, beginning to strategize for college and scholarship applications, and the list goes on… Restful, no. But I could deal with those moments, as long as I didn’t have to plan or monitor progress or be 100% responsible on my own for the outcome of anything.

So it’s been two weeks of no expectations. No gauging results. No consequences. No labeling anything a success. Just living…

So how do we write when we’re soul tired? My advice is, we don’t. We live. We revel. We experience. We re-fill that well, without focusing on recharging energy. We don’t place any demands on time for a change. For just a little while.

If we do, the writing and the creative and the determination will come back. But the longer we try to force the mending of an over-taxed mind, the weaker and more delayed the recovery–and the soul that returns.

These last few weeks, I’ve been planning both Love on Mimosa Lane as well as a four-book continuation of the ML series. In my mind. Nothing on paper. But…I’m suddenly in love with the ideas that are beginning to take shape.

I’m excited about the possibility of diving into my fourth novel in less than a year. I’m beginning to sleep again at night. Just a little. I can almost believe the pressure won’t crush me this time, as I launch back into new writing, while I wait for more edits on Three Days on Mimosa Lane, while I plan promotion for it’s July 23rd release (as well as for the first three books in the series, since for around 6 months from July ‘13 through next year this time I’ll be promoting something from Mimosa Lane pretty much non-stop), while I help coordinate the 2013 RWA Conference workshops, while I prepare to travel and teach other writers about the craft I love so much…

These last few weeks, I’ve turned off the fear and expectations and learned how to just be again. A person, an artist, a writer, a wife and mother.

Try it, the next time your soul feels to numb to deal with the next thing on your list.

I promise…sometimes doing absolutely NOTHING is the very best medicine of all.

Thank you…

My family and I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday week.

And I wanted to say a special thank you to all who’ve supported Christmas on Mimosa Lane’s release. My first women’s fiction/contemporary romance hybrid was quite a risk to take. My emotional, angsty voice is something you dig, or you really REALLY don’t. Going with Montlake and their primarily digital plans for the book was a scary shift in publishing paths, too. But to all my readers and fans I wanted to say, OMG, your response to the book has been overwhelming. I couldn’t be more blown away.

At the time of this blog post, COML has 69 Five Star reviews, is still the #1 Family Saga on Amazon, and has sold more than 40,000 copies in just two months!

What can I say, except that you guys ROCK!

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for embracing this special book and the series I’ve been lucky enough to begin at Montlake. Now, I’m off to finish Book Two, aiming for a late Summer/early Fall release ;o)

Here’s to an exciting 2013!

Holidays and Healing: “Unable are the Loved to die…”

“Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality…” ~~ Emily Dickinson

When you write a Christmas book about loss and grief and recovery…and love, you’re walking a tricky path full of obsticals and blind paths and possible pitfalls you can’t see coming.

It’s kind of like navigating the holidays while you’re missing loved ones or dealing with the emptiness that’s left behind when someone who should still be here is gone from your life for good. Except that the holidays are all about hope and healing and believing in a better tomorrow, regardless of what’s troubling you today, so I guess that’s why I tackled such deep and personal subject matter and characters in my first ever holiday story.

It’s too easy to focus on only the loss of someone.

It’s too easy to ignore it entirely.

What’s harder is remembering and loving and wanting them here still, once they’re gone, and believing that what’s best about them is still with us.

It can be nearly impossible this time of year to feel hopeful that a lost love’s future in our lives is still possible. But it is. And if we give ourselves a chance to believe that, what a bright and ever-expanding future that can become.

The loved ones we’ve lost, no matter how painful their passing, are immortal. They’re forever  part of who they’re helping us to become.

We honor them by remembering and hoping during the holidays and beyond, even when some memories may at first be too painful to process. If we keep lost loved ones with us, if we keep them close, they will continue to change us into who we were destined to become the moment they entered our lives.

We honor ourselves by seeing abundance and the chance to do better and more and to do more for others, the same as lost loves have done for us.

Honor and love and remember this holiday season, the same as my characters do in my emotional and sometimes sad but deeply hopeful stories.

Embrace the immortality of healing, I believe Emily Dickinson is saying in this quote and in all the snippets of poetry I borrowed for Christmas on Mimosa Lane.

A timeless message, just in time for this holiday.

Related Emily Dickinson Articles:

Forever is composed of nows
To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need
It’s good we are dreaming
Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door
Hope is the thing with feathers…

Related holiday posts:

If this were your last Christmas, what would it be?
Past, Futre and Present Christmas
Holiday Hangover
Holiday Memories
Hope for the Holidays
The BEST Holiday Memories are Made From the Darnedest Things
Holiday Traditions, Symbols and Themes

Safety… What defines yours: hope or fear?

Be honest, had been Mallory’s wise advise–a woman who hadn’t felt safe enough to be honest about who she really was with anyone in their community, no matter how much she clearly wanted to belong in their world.

Safety, he’d learned from both his job and the last six months as a single father, wasn’t something you waited to come to you. You had to make your own safety happen…

~~ Pete Lombard, Christmas on Mimosa Lane

It’s an interesting paradox–the interplay between what makes us feel safe and what challenges us to step outside our comfortable lives.

No one in this country is really feeling comfortable today, I wager, so it seems like the perfect time to tackle this reader guide question for Christmas on Mimosa Lane. Because this book ( all my books, really) is about feeling safe and feeling like you belong and finding the community and family and personal confidence you need to keep that feeling, no matter what happens.

But here’s the thing. We are our own safety. How we see the world and the past and the danger we perceive and what’s really there, that’s a choice. We can be tied to what’s damaged in us, or we can focus on what we choose to become despite what’s broken. It’s entirely up to us. We can be afraid or we can be be fearless, regardless of any other variable, no matter how tragic.

Fearlessness isn’t stupidity or naivete, mind you. Pretending we don’t have a problem is another kind of fear. In fact, it’s the worst kind. It’s how we’re guaranteed never to move forward. So that’s another choice we make to say we only deserve the brokenness that scares us.

We are the only change we can control.

Not the outcome. Not the threats. Not the determined evil that will find us if it truly wants to, no matter how hard we fight or how much we prepare. But what we chose to make our future about–the next minute, day, week, year, decade of our lives–that’s our victory or our failure. It’s all that we are, a series of determined realities, a perspective that says we either hope or we fear.

Hope or fear?

Which will control you?

Which do you suppose ends up controlling my COML characters? ;o)

The end of the innocence. The beginning of healing.

Our nation’s at a crossroads, where we must stop not looking at what is difficult and deadly, we must begin grieving again, and then we must heal ourselves by doing whatever is needed, no matter what it takes, to prevent future pain. Denial is part of the healing process. It comes after shock, as we process our grief. Next: anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. If left unchecked, denial can lead to unspeakable consequences.

For too long, we’ve allowed ourselves to stay stuck in denial, which gets us nowhere except to 20 children and 6 faculty slaughtered yesterday before morning snack break. For too long, we haven’t wanted our country to go through the growing pains of anger, bargaining and depression required to accept the challenge before us and the laws that must be changed in order to stop this. Whatever laws must be changed. Whomever has to compromise in order for that to happen.

We must reach a place where our children and teachers and heroes and families are safe, and where our mentally ill are properly diagnosed, cared for and, yes, contained, if they’re deemed a threat to society. Otherwise, we’re doing this to ourselves and our loved ones and neighbors, and we’re saying that’s okay. It’s worth the sacrifice, as long as we don’t have to look to hard or work to hard or face what we don’t want to.

A common complaint about my fiction writing is that, though I’m a generally happy and entertaining person, my stories are heavy, my characters are flawed, and my plots are neither light nor easy to digest–no matter the happy ending a reader gets to enjoy once I’m through with them.

Yes, I ask my characters and readers to move past the easier issues and see the anger, bargaining and depression that is human nature when the hard stuff comes. I ask this of myself and my own family every day: that we process the difficult things instead of looking away; that we strive for acceptance and refuse to submit until we’ve arrived there.

This won’t be an easy journey. This path will take everyday heroes to complete. Just like my characters, my family, my readers and you are all capable of being either heroes or blind, passive, in denial quitters.

We cannot stay innocent and ignorant of the reality we’ve created in this country, where a madman with four guns and a burning need to kill children can smash through a window and a security system and destroy until his heart’s content and only stop when a SWAT team responds and corners him.

We cannot ignore the epeidemic of mental illness in this country that isn’t being dealt with because insurance companies aren’t required to fund treatment.

We cannot allow guns to be purchased in mass and not tracked and their use not curtailed in any way, because we’re so afraid and in such shock and denial and are bargaining for our our own personal security at the expense of innocent lives who cannot speak for themselves and shout their worth to us.

Can you hear the children screaming that they are worth more than our unrestricted freedoms and or corporate profits, and that they deserve to live longer than our carelessness, and that they would still be here if we’d accepted the job before us sooner…after the last public massacre?

I can.

Can you?

This is the end of the blind innocence that led us here. This is the beginning of the pain and the healing. This is the hope that gets me through and helps me process and shows me a way forward. This my challenge to you.

The Soul of the Matter: For love is immortality…

Unable are the Loved to die

For love is immortality…

                                       ~~Emily Dickinson

This is one of my favorite ED quotes. It’s one of the truths of this world and this season that will never pass. And, yes, it’s the emotional core of my first ever Christmas novel.

I hear from readers daily who love the deeper and darker elements of Mallory and Pete and Polly’s story. AND from readers who are railing that I would do something so realistic, when lighter and happier novels are what a lot of us think about reflecting a “holiday” spirit.

But what better message could there be to wrap a story around, than that those we love are always with us, even after their gone?And, at least for this writer, how should I show the reader a path to truly believing this truth, other than to begin with what this time of year can feel like if we’re still clinging to the loss of someone important in our lives, rather than the love that they will always bring to us whether or not we still have them physically?

Yes, Emily Dickinson wrote a lot about loss. Yes, I do, too.

 But I sense in her poetry, which I’ve been obsessed about since I was an intense little girl, her search for hope and healing and purpose–despite the difficulties of her life. I’ve been on that path myself since losing a good bit at a very young age.

So, when it came time to create images of little girls missing their mommies and husbands moving on from losing wives and grown women learning to trust and belong when their formative years were all about betrayal and being separate–you had to know I’d be painting with a brush that doesn’t gloss over reality on its rush to the happily ever after dream I want my characters to claim.

The title of this second book of my heart is Christmas on Mimosa Lane. And I’ve created the most beautiful Christmas morning I could have imagined.

However, that morning happens in the very last chapter and the very last scene of the book.In that moment of understanding, each of our characters find the immortality that love can bring into an open and trusting and hopeful life. It’s a difficult journey to get them and us there, but a rewarding and heartwarming and inspiring one.

Which isn’t all that realistic a story, after all, when you look at the world playing out around us. In fact, I find what we discover in COML pretty fantastical, all things considered. But it’s my dream this year–for my characters and each of you.

May this be a holiday of forever love for us all!

Related Emily Dickinson Articles:

Forever is composed of nows
To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need
It’s good we are dreaming
Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door
Hope is the thing with feathers…

Related holiday posts:

If this were your last Christmas, what would it be?
Past, Future and Present Christmas
Holiday Hangover
Holiday Memories
Hope for the Holidays
The BEST Holiday Memories are Made From the Darnedest Things
Holiday Traditions, Symbols and Themes

The Soul of the Matte: For love is immortality…

Unable are the Loved to die

For love is immortality…

                                       ~~Emily Dickinson

This is one of my favorite ED quotes. It’s one of the truths of this world and this season that will never pass. And, yes, it’s the emotional core of my first ever Christmas novel.

I hear from readers daily who love the deeper and darker elements of Mallory and Pete and Polly’s story. AND from readers who are railing that I would do something so realistic, when lighter and happier novels are what a lot of us think about reflecting a “holiday” spirit.

But what better message could there be to wrap a story around, than that those we love are always with us, even after their gone?And, at least for this writer, how should I show the reader a path to truly believing this truth, other than to begin with what this time of year can feel like if we’re still clinging to the loss of someone important in our lives, rather than the love that they will always bring to us whether or not we still have them physically?

Yes, Emily Dickinson wrote a lot about loss. Yes, I do, too.

 But I sense in her poetry, which I’ve been obsessed about since I was an intense little girl, her search for hope and healing and purpose–despite the difficulties of her life. I’ve been on that path myself since losing a good bit at a very young age.

So, when it came time to create images of little girls missing their mommies and husbands moving on from losing wives and grown women learning to trust and belong when their formative years were all about betrayal and being separate–you had to know I’d be painting with a brush that doesn’t gloss over reality on its rush to the happily ever after dream I want my characters to claim.

The title of this second book of my heart is Christmas on Mimosa Lane. And I’ve created the most beautiful Christmas morning I could have imagined.

However, that morning happens in the very last chapter and the very last scene of the book.In that moment of understanding, each of our characters find the immortality that love can bring into an open and trusting and hopeful life. It’s a difficult journey to get them and us there, but a rewarding and heartwarming and inspiring one.

Which isn’t all that realistic a story, after all, when you look at the world playing out around us. In fact, I find what we discover in COML pretty fantastical, all things considered. But it’s my dream this year–for my characters and each of you.

May this be a holiday of forever love for us all!

Related Emily Dickinson Articles:

Forever is composed of nows
To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need
It’s good we are dreaming
Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door
Hope is the thing with feathers…

Related holiday posts:

If this were your last Christmas, what would it be?
Past, Future and Present Christmas
Holiday Hangover
Holiday Memories
Hope for the Holidays
The BEST Holiday Memories are Made From the Darnedest Things
Holiday Traditions, Symbols and Themes

A review from a reader who shouldn’t have but found love…

I am not a fan of the Sad Christmas stories, but this one, for me, was exactly the right story at the right time in my life. I bought this thinking I needed a really happy, uplifting Christmas tale to make the realty of my life easier during this Christmas Season. Instead, I found that what I really needed was to cry, to see others were much worse off than I. This is definitely not the feel good happy Christmas that the majority of us think we are creating each holiday, but it is the one that most of us find at the end of all of our frenzied preparations. It is one unlike what most of us live.

This is a story of heartbreak, loss, desolation and still somehow in all of the loss there is this glimmer or hope and of the human spirit struggling to master everything negative in our world. Is also a story of tremendous love and the realty of what a life on the streets might be like for a child.

While it is not the usual Christmas fare, for some of us who are struggling with a loved one who no longer remembers us or any of the wonderful Christmas’s they created for their loved one’s; it is a story of triumph, love, hope and the memory of the times when things were better than they are now.

Read, Cry, Heal and Remember the GOOD TIMES…

I’ve already posted on the blog today, but I couldn’t help myself. THIS is why I write these stories.In case there’s any confusion in anyone’s mind why I do what I do with the family dramas and romances I write, this is the type of reader I write them for.

Yes, I demand a happy ending. But it’s the reality we begin with the the journey and the emotions I hope you all feel as you read that I’m mining for.

Thanks to the above reader for leaving such a frank and honest review. And for the 5 Stars, no matter how unexpected the story turned out to be, or how far away it was from the happy escape she began reading it for…

If this were your last Christmas, what would it be?

I know. The blog title sounds grim, when in fact, it’s my challenge for us all. In my Christmas novel, a father and daughter are dealing with the first holiday season after losing their wife/mother–and the memories of the previous Christmas they hadn’t known would be their last. The result–make THIS holiday the home and family and cherished memories they’ve always longed for. Why put it off? Why not go for everything. No holding back. No saving for later. Revel and indulge and fight to the last breath for whatever good now can be…

Several of Christmas on Mimosa Lane’s reader’s guide questions challenge you to think about what “good” and “happy” and “home” mean to you and your life and your holiday–so does the story and its characters. Many of the Emily Dickinson quotes I use are in-your-face reminders to see now far better than you do before or tomorrow. Life here. In this day. Make your home today what you want it to be. Make your life a struggle not simply to overcome a past failure or achieve future goal, but to be present for yourself and others in ways that guarantee that this moment is the best it possibly can me.

If this were your last Christmas, and you knew that now, what wouldn’t you do to make this year’s the very best ever? Would you let anyone stand in your way, or any memory tarnish this holiday’s experience? Would you hold out for next year or the one after, shortchanging what now could mean to you and the ones you love? I don’t think so. Neither do the characters in my novel.

And, you see, I write redemptive Christmas stories is by showing flawed characters, like you and me, with a lot of hurdles to clear before they get their happy ever after. It’s not until the middle of COML that we see the story turn toward a positive, potentially, ending. And even then, Mallory and Pete and Polly must fight to the very end, or they’ll lose what they want most. Just as we all do. Even Santa.

I have an image in my head of Santa with boxing gloves on, refusing to go down for the count regardless of all the difficult things happening in the world this holiday.

So, keep fighting. Keep wishing and making those dreams come true. No matter what the world’s throwing your way. Make this Christmas happen the way you’ve always dreamed it would. Good. Happy. Home. Make those your reality today and every day from here out.

That’s what difficult journeys like the lives my characters and many of us have lived teach us.

Grab the good every chance you get, fight off the bad, and live, love and appreciate this very rare honor we all have to be here and make that being mean something very special!

Related holiday posts:

Past, Futre and Present Christmas
Holiday Hangover
Holiday Memories
Hope for the Holidays
The BEST Holiday Memories are Made From the Darnedest Things
Holiday Traditions, Symbols and Themes

Publishing Isn’t for Sissies…When the work and creative and “other” sides collide

Samantha Perry was all dressed up with someplace to go. Yet it was closer to midnight than dawn in her winter world. Amidst what wouldn’t be a flowering garden for several months, as if a July morning’s warmth surrounded her, she paced another lap around her community’s park.

The sun was due. It would soon be another January day like any other day in their northern suburb of Atlanta. Another harmless moment to get through. Nothing yawned more threatening than getting her sleepy family ready for their Mimosa Lane Monday. But on a scale from nervous to freaked out, Sam had been silently racing toward a meltdown the entire weekend.

Somewhere around three o’clock last night she’d risen from beside her still-sleeping husband, showered and dressed for the day and bundled into the heavy coat Georgia demanded from only a few months each year. Heading downstairs and through her cozy kitchen’s French doors, she’d escaped into the peace that being outside and alone brought her. She’d been night walking for hours.

Opening Draft

Sweet Summer Sunrise

Seasons of the Heart

Book Two

***

It’s a crazy work and personal weekend.

I won’t go into the details, except to say that opportunities are taking off all over the place, and so is the stress, and so is the upheaval in my “away from work” life. It’s usually like that. You never see the good or the bad stuff coming, and you never appreciate the calm until the storm’s upon you.

So, of course, I owe my publisher the second book in the series that’s taking off like no one expected, with it’s Christmas novel launch.And on top of my life being overwhelmed with back-to-back holidays AND promoting a book release that keeps (YAY!) going strong, I’m facing the rewriting of a 380 page rough draft that means so much to me–but isn’t at the point where I think it’ll mean anything to anyone else unless I recraft it over and over and over again, until it’s talking on it’s own.

Publishing isn’t for sissies, my friends.And it’s always about the next book. And the next. And these days, success in digital publishing about having an ongoing series with lots of backlist titles. The only way to do that is to keep writing forward and building into what readers are buying–and somehow maintaining the integrity of your work and stories and characters, so you keep pleasing the fans who are loving what you’ve already done. It’s a never-ending circle of working and finger crossing and doubting and celebrating, only to work, cross your fingers, doubt and hopefully celebrate all over again with the next release. Only there are no guarantees. Until, at times, say on a too-busy Sunday like today, your business and creative and “real life” selves collide until your consciousness begins to resemble something more than a little undead.

There’s only the work, and knowing how YOU work so you can keep producing amidst the craziness and the temptation to take time off just when you need to work the hardest to propel your career forward.

The above opening quote is my bookmark, my note to myself. I DO have something good here, even if it won’t be good for anyone else until early January. And the only way it’ll have a chance to be good by then is if I write and rewrite my fingers raw amidst the crazy coming for me from every direction this December.

I will work my ass off this month. I will make the time despite everything else I need to do. I won’t squander this opportunity to share more story with readers who are loving this series and demanding daily for the next book. In fact, I want two more Seasons of the Heart novels out in 2013. And I’m going to make that happen. Somehow.

If you’re a writer, join me in making the next celebration in your career happen–by working harder on your WIP than you ever have on anything else.

If you’re a reader, support the dreaming and drafting and rewriting and determination of the talented writers you love to read!

Write on, my friends!